Pygmalion and Three Other Plays (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by George Bernard Shaw

  B. B. Have you forgotten the lovely opera singer I sent you to have that growth taken off her vocal cords?

  WALPOLE [springing to his feet] Great heavens, man, you dont mean to say you sent her for a throat operation!

  B. B. [archly] Aha! Ha ha! Aha! [trilling like a lark as he shakes his finger at WALPOLE]. You removed her nuciform sac. Well, well! force of habit! force of habit! Never mind, ne-e-e-ver mind. She got back her voice after it, and thinks you the greatest surgeon alive; and so you are, so you are, so you are.

  WALPOLE [in a tragic whisper, intensely serious] Blood-poisoning. I see. I see. [He sits down again].

  SIR PATRICK And how is a certain distinguished family getting on under your care, Sir Ralph?

  B. B. Our friend Ridgeon will be gratified to hear that I have tried his opsonin treatment on little Prince Henry with complete success.

  RIDGEON [startled and anxious] But how———

  B. B. [continuing] I suspected typhoid: the head gardener’s boy had it; so I just called at St Anne’s one day and got a tube of your very excellent serum. You were out, unfortunately.

  RIDGEON I hope they explained to you carefully———

  B. B. [waving away the absurd suggestion] Lord bless you, my dear fellow, I didnt need any explanations. I’d left my wife in the carriage at the door; and I’d no time to be taught my business by your young chaps. I know all about it. Ive handled these anti-toxins ever since they first came out.

  RIDGEON But theyre not anti-toxins; and theyre dangerous unless you use them at the right time.

  B. B. Of course they are. Everything is dangerous unless you take it at the right time. An apple at breakfast does you good: an apple at bedtime upsets you for a week. There are only two rules for anti-toxins. First, dont be afraid of them: second, inject them a quarter of an hour before meals, three times a day.

  RIDGE ON [appalled] Great heavens, B. B., no, no, no.

  B. B. [sweeping on irresistibly] Yes, yes, yes, Colly. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, you know. It was an immense success. It acted like magic on the little prince. Up went his temperature; off to bed I packed him; and in a week he was all right again, and absolutely immune from typhoid for the rest of his life. The family were very nice about it: their gratitude was quite touching; but I said they owed it all to you, Ridgeon; and I am glad to think that your knighthood is the result.

  RIDGEON I am deeply obliged to you. [Overcome, he sits down on the chair near the couch].

  B. B. Not at all, not at all.Your own merit. Come! come! come! dont give way.

  RIDGEON It’s nothing. I was a little giddy just now. Overwork, I suppose.

  WALPOLE Blood-poisoning.

  B. B. Overwork! Theres no such thing. I do the work of ten men. Am I giddy? No. NO. If youre not well, you have a disease. It may be a slight one; but it’s a disease. And what is a disease? The lodgment in the system of a pathogenic germ, and the multiplication of that germ. What is the remedy? A very simple one. Find the germ and kill it.

  SIR PATRICK Suppose theres no germ?

  B. B. Impossible, Sir Patrick: there m u s t be a germ: else how could the patient be ill?

  SIR PATRICK Can you shew me the germ of overwork?

  B. B. No; but why? Why? Because, my dear Sir Patrick, though the germ is there, it’s invisible. Nature has given it no danger signal for us. These germs—these bacilli—are translucent bodies, like glass, like water. To make them visible you must stain them. Well, my dear Paddy, do what you will, some of them wont stain. They wont take cochineal: they wont take methylene blue; they wont take gentian violet: they wont take any coloring matter. Consequently, though we know, as scientific men, that they exist, we cannot see them. But can you disprove their existence? Can you conceive the disease existing without them? Can you, for instance, shew me a case of diphtheria without the bacillus?

  SIR PATRICK No; but I’ll shew you the same bacillus, without the disease, in your own throat.

  B. B. No, not the same, Sir Patrick. It is an entirely different bacillus; only the two are, unfortunately, so exactly alike that you cannot see the difference. You must understand, my dear Sir Patrick, that every one of these interesting little creatures has an imitator. Just as men imitate each other, germs imitate each other. There is the genuine diphtheria bacillus discovered by Loeffler; and there is the pseudo-bacillus, exactly like it, which you could find, as you say, in my own throat.

  SIR PATRICK And how do you tell one from the other?

  B. B. Well, obviously, if the bacillus is the genuine Loeffler, you have diphtheria; and if it’s the pseudo-bacillus, youre quite well. Nothing simpler. Science is always simple and always profound. It is only the half-truths that are dangerous. Ignorant faddists pick up some superficial information about germs; and they write to the papers and try to discredit science. They dupe and mislead many honest and worthy people. But science has a perfect answer to them on every point.

  A little learning is a dangerous thing;

  Drink deep; or taste not the Pierian spring.ex

  I mean no disrespect to your generation, Sir Patrick: some of you old stagers did marvels through sheer professional intuition and clinical experience; but when I think of the average men of your day, ignorantly bleeding and cupping and purging, and scattering germs over their patients from their clothes and instruments, and contrast all that with the scientific certainty and simplicity of my treatment of the little prince the other day, I cant help being proud of my own generation : the men who were trained on the germ theory, the veterans of the great struggle over Evolution in the seventies. We may have our faults; but at least we are men of science. That is why I am taking up your treatment, Ridgeon, and pushing it. It’s scientific. [He sits down on the chair near the couch].

  EMMY [at the door, announcing] Dr Blenkinsop.

  DR BLENKINSOP is in very different case from the others. He is clearly not a prosperous man. He is flabby and shabby, cheaply fed and cheaply clothed. He has the lines made by a conscience between his eyes, and the lines made by continual money worries all over his face, cut all the deeper as he has seen better days, and hails his well-to-do colleagues as their contemporary and old hospital friend, though even in this he has to struggle with the diffidence of poverty and relegation to the poorer middle class.

  RIDGEON How are you, Blenkinsop?

  BLENKINSOP Ive come to offer my humble congratulations. Oh dear! all the great guns are before me.

  B. B. [patronizing, but charming] How d‘ye do, Blenkinsop? How d’ye do?

  BLENKINSOP And Sir Patrick, too! [SIR PATRICK grunts].

  RIDGEON Youve met Walpole, of course?

  WALPOLE How d‘ye do?

  BLENKINSOP It’s the first time Ive had that honor. In my poor little practice there are no chances of meeting you great men. I know nobody but the St Anne’s men of my own day. [To RIDGEON] And so youre Sir Colenso. How does it feel?

  RIDGEON Foolish at first. Dont take any notice of it.

  BLENKINSOP I’m ashamed to say I havnt a notion what your great discovery is; but I congratulate you all the same for the sake of old times.

  B. B. [shocked] But, my dear Blenkinsop, you used to be rather keen on science.

  BLENKINSOP Ah, I used to be a lot of things. I used to have two or three decent suits of clothes, and flannels to go up the river on Sundays. Look at me now: this is my best; and it must last till Christmas. What can I do? Ive never opened a book since I was qualified thirty years ago. I used to read the medical papers at first; but you know how soon a man drops that; besides, I cant afford them; and what are they after all but trade papers, full of advertisements? Ive forgotten all my science : whats the use of my pretending I havnt? But I have great experience: clinical experience; and bedside experience is the main thing, isnt it?

  B. B. No doubt; always provided, mind you, that you have a sound scientific theory to correlate your observations at the bedside. Mere experience by itself is nothing. If I take my dog to the bedside wi
th me, he sees what I see. But he learns nothing from it. Why? Because he’s not a scientific dog.

  WALPOLE It amuses me to hear you physicians and general practitioners talking about clinical experience. What do you see at the bedside but the outside of the patient? Well: it isnt his outside thats wrong, except perhaps in skin cases. What you want is a daily familiarity with people’s insides; and that you can only get at the operating table. I know what I’m talking about: Ive been a surgeon and a consultant for twenty years; and Ive never known a general practitioner right in his diagnosis yet. Bring them a perfectly simple case; and they diagnose cancer, and arthritis, and appendicitis, and every other itis, when any really experienced surgeon can see that it’s a plain case of blood-poisoning.

  BLENKINSOP Ah, it’s easy for you gentlemen to talk; but what would you say if you had my practice? Except for the workmen’s clubs, my patients are all clerks and shopmen. They darent be ill: they cant afford it. And when they break down, what can I do for them? Youcan send your people to St Moritz or to Egypt, or recommend horse exercise or motoring or champagne jelly or complete change and rest for six months. I might as well order my people a slice of the moon. And the worst of it is, I’m too poor to keep well myself on the cooking I have to put up with. Ive such a wretched digestion; and I look it. How am I to inspire confidence? [He sits disconsolately on the couch].

  RIDGEON [restlessly] Dont, Blenkinsop: it’s too painful. The most tragic thing in the world is a sick doctor.

  WALPOLE Yes, by George: its like a bald-headed man trying to sell a hair restorer. Thank God I’m a surgeon!

  B. B. (sunnily) I am never sick. Never had a day’s illness in my life. Thats what enables me to sympathize with my patients.

  WALPOLE [interested] What! youre never ill?

  B. B. Never.

  WALPOLE Thats interesting. I believe you have no nuciform sac. If you ever do feel at all queer, I should very much like to have a look.

  B. B. Thank you, my dear fellow; but I’m too busy just now.

  RIDGEON I was just telling them when you came in, Blenkinsop, that I have worked myself out of sorts.

  BLENKINSOP Well, it seems presumptuous of me to offer a prescription to a great man like you; but still I have great experience ; and if I might recommend a pound of ripe greengages every day half an hour before lunch, I’m sure youd find a benefit. Theyre very cheap.

  RIDGEON What do you say to that B. B.?

  B. B. [encouragingly] Very sensible, Blenkinsop: very sensible indeed. I’m delighted to see that you disapprove of drugs.

  SIR PATRICK [grunts]!

  B. B. [archly] Aha! Haha! Did I hear from the fireside armchair the bow-wow of the old school defending its drugs? Ah, believe me, Paddy, the world would be healthier if every chemist’s shop in England were demolished. Look at the papers ! full of scandalous advertisements of patent medicines! a huge commercial system of quackery and poison. Well, whose fault is it? Ours. I say, ours. We set the example. We spread the superstition. We taught the people to believe in bottles of doctor’s stuff; and now they buy it at the stores instead of consulting a medical man.

  WALPOLE Quite true. Ive not prescribed a drug for the last fifteen years.

  B. B. Drugs can only repress symptoms: they cannot eradicate disease. The true remedy for all diseases is Nature’s remedy. Nature and Science are at one, Sir Patrick, believe me; though you were taught differently. Nature has provided, in the white corpuscles as you call them—in the phagocytes as we call them—a natural means of devouring and destroying all disease germs. There is at bottom only one genuinely scientific treatment for all diseases, and that is to stimulate the phagocytes. Stimulate the phagocytes. Drugs are a delusion. Find the germ of the disease; prepare from it a suitable anti-toxin; inject it three times a day quarter of an hour before meals; and what is the result? The phagocytes are stimulated; they devour the disease ; and the patient recovers—unless, of course, he’s too far gone. That, I take it, is the essence of Ridgeon’s discovery.

  SIR PATRICK [dreamily] As I sit here, I seem to hear my poor old father talking again.

  B. B. [rising in incredulous amazement] Your father! But, Lord bless my soul, Paddy, your father must have been an older man than you.

  SIR PATRICK Word for word almost, he said what you say. No more drugs. Nothing but inoculation.

  B. B. [almost contemptuously] Inoculation! Do you mean smallpox inoculation?

  SIR PATRICK Yes. In the privacy of our circle, sir, my father used to declare his belief that pox inoculation was good, not only for smallpox, but for all fevers.

  B. B. [suddenly rising to the new idea with immense interest and excitement] What! Ridgeon: did you hear that? Sir Patrick: I am more struck by what you have just told me than I can well express. Your father, sir, anticipated a discovery of my own. Listen, Walpole. Blenkinsop: attend one moment. You will all be intensely interested in this. I was put on the track by accident. I had a typhoid case and a tetanus case side by side in the hospital : a beadle and a city missionary. Think of what that meant for them, poor fellows! Can a beadle be dignified with typhoid ? Can a missionary be eloquent with lockjaw? No. NO. Well, I got some typhoid anti-toxin from Ridgeon and a tube of Muldooley’s anti-tetanus serum. But the missionary jerked all my things off the table in one of his paroxysms; and in replacing them I put Ridgeon’s tube where Muldooley’s ought to have been. The consequence was that I inoculated the typhoid case for tetanus and the tetanus case for typhoid. [The doctors look greatly concerned. B. B., undamped, smiles triumphantly]. Well, they recovered. THEY RECOVERED. Except for a touch of St Vitus’s dance the missionary’s as well to-day as ever; and the beadle’s ten times the man he was.

  BLENKINSOP Ive known things like that happen. They cant be explained.

  B. B. [severely] Blenkinsop: there is nothing that cannot be explained by science. What did I do? Did I fold my hands helplessly and say that the case could not be explained? By no means. I sat down and used my brains. I thought the case out on scientific principles. I asked myself why didnt the missionary die of typhoid on top of tetanus, and the beadle of tetanus on top of typhoid? Theres a problem for you, Ridgeon. Think, Sir Patrick. Reflect, Blenkinsop. Look at it without prejudice, Walpole. What is the real work of the anti-toxin? Simply to stimulate the phagocytes. Very well. But so long as you stimulate the phagocytes, what does it matter which particular sort of serum you use for the purpose? Haha! Eh? Do you see? Do you grasp it? Ever since that Ive used all sorts of anti-toxins absolutely indiscriminately, with perfectly satisfactory results. I inoculated the little prince with your stuff, Ridgeon, because I wanted to give you a lift; but two years ago I tried the experiment of treating a scarlet fever case with a sample of hydrophobia serum from the Pasteur Institute, and it answered capitally. It stimulated the phagocytes; and the phagocytes did the rest. That is why Sir Patrick’s father found that inoculation cured all fevers. It stimulated the phagocytes. [He throws himself into his chair, exhausted with the triumph of his demonstration, and beams magnificently on them].

  EMMY (looking in] Mr Walpole: your motor’s come for you; and it’s frightening Sir Patrick’s horses; so, come along quick.

  WALPOLE [rising] Good-bye, Ridgeon.

  RIDGEON Good-bye; and many thanks.

  B. B. You see my point, Walpole?

  EMMY He cant wait, Sir Ralph. The carriage will be into the area if he dont come.

  WALPOLE I’m coming. [To B. B.] Theres nothing in your point: phagocytosis is pure rot: the cases are all blood-poisoning; and the knife is the real remedy. Bye-bye, Sir Paddy. Happy to have met you, Mr. Blenkinsop. Now, Emmy. [He goes out,followed by EMMY].

  B. B. [sadly] Walpole has no intellect. A mere surgeon. Wonderful operator; but, after all, what is operating? Only manual labor. Brain-BRAIN remains master of the situation. The nuciform sac is utter nonsense: theres no such organ. It’s a mere accidental kink in the membrane, occurring in perhaps two-and-a-half per cent of the population. Of course I’m g
lad for Walpole’s sake that the operation is fashionable; for he’s a dear good fellow; and after all, as I always tell people, the operation will do them no harm: indeed, Ive known the nervous shake-up and the fortnight in bed do people a lot of good after a hard London season; but still it’s a shocking fraud. [Rising] Well, I must be toddling. Good-bye, Paddy [SIR PATRICK grunts] good-bye, good-bye. Good-bye, my dear Blenkinsop, good-bye! Good-bye, Ridgeon. Dont fret about your health: you know what to do: if your liver is sluggish, a little mercury never does any harm. If you feel restless, try bromide. If that doesnt answer, a stimulant, you know: a little phosphorus and strychnine. If you cant sleep, trional, trional, trion—

  SIR PATRICK [drily] But no drugs, Colly, remember that.

  B. B. [firmly] Certainly not. Quite right, Sir Patrick. As temporary expedients, of course; but as treatment, no, NO. Keep away from the chemist’s shop, my dear Ridgeon, whatever you do.

  RIDGEON [going to the door with him] I will. And thank you for the knighthood. Good-bye.

  B. B. [stopping at the door, with the beam in his eye twinkling a little] By the way, who’s your patient?

  RIDGEON Who?

  B. B. Downstairs. Charming woman. Tuberculous husband.

  RIDGEON Is she there still?

  EMMY [looking in] Come on, Sir Ralph: your wife’s waiting in the carriage.

  B. B. (suddenly sobered] Oh! Good-bye. [He goes out almost precipitately] .

  RIDGEON Emmy: is that woman there still? If so, tell her once for all that I cant and wont see her. Do you hear?

  EMMY Oh, she aint in a hurry: she doesnt mind how long she waits. [She goes out].

  BLENKINSOP I must be off, too: every half-hour I spend away from my work costs me eighteenpence. Good-bye, Sir Patrick.

  SIR PATRICK Good-bye. Good-bye.

  RIDGEON Come to lunch with me some day this week.

  BLENKINSOP I cant afford it, dear boy; and it would put me off my own food for a week. Thank you all the same.

  RIDGEON [uneasy at BLENKINSOP’s poverty] Can I do nothing for you?

  BLENKINSOP Well, if you have an old frock-coat to spare? you see what would be an old one for you would be a new one for me; so remember the next time you turn out your wardrobe. Good-bye. [He hurries out].